Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. This web cam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset too… depending upon weather conditions.

Aloha Paragraphs

Island of Lanai…at sunset

Gradually returning trade winds this weekend
into the new week

Localized showers tonight…then some windward
showers this weekend into the new week

The following numbers represent the most recent top wind gusts (mph), along with directions…as of Friday evening:

Generally light southeast breezes in most areas…gradually becoming trade winds this weekend. Here’s the latestweather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean. Here’s a real-time wind profile of the central Pacific…centered on the Hawaiian Islands. ~~~ We find a north to south oriented low pressure trough slowly moving eastward…across the islands. Meanwhile, we see high pressure systems well offshore to the west and east-northeast of the state. These high pressure cells have elongated ridges of high pressure extending east and west into our general area. Winds will generally be on the light side, with gradually returning trade winds this weekend…continuing through the first half of the new week ahead.Satellite imageryshows bright white, deep clouds around Kauai and Oahu…which are edging over towards Maui County. The islands remain under the influence of a low pressure trough, slowly migrating west to east. The clouds in our area are associated with this low pressure system, with heavy rainfall that fell over Kauai earlier in the day. Here’s thelooping radar image, showing moderate showers over the ocean to the south of Kauai and Oahu. Some of these showers will approach the islands tonight into Saturday morning. Looking at this largersatellite image, which is in the looping mode, we can see this trough of low pressure in our area, as it migrates towards the east across our island chain. It appears that Kauai and Oahu will continue to have the best chance of receiving some of these heavy showers, with a few falling locally elsewhere going forward.

We’ll see returning trade winds filling in behind the trough, focusing most of our showers along the windward sides this weekend…into the new week. The rainy clouds associated with this trough near Kauai and Oahu will keep some rainfall over those islands in places, and perhaps eventually reaching Maui County with time. As this low pressure system moves across the state, some less intense showers may spread over to the Big Island as well. As we move into the weekend, we’ll see the return of trade winds in the wake of the troughs passage. These trade winds will keep the windward sides in showers at times, with improved weather beginning to grace our leeward beaches….which should continue on into the new week. Looking further ahead, we may see a cold front approaching the state from the northwest next Friday into the weekend…stay tuned. I’ll be back Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui, at the 3,100 foot elevation, at my upper Kula, Maui weather tower, the air temperature was 54.7F degrees at 555amon this Friday morning. As always at this time in the morning, its still too dark to see what’s happening out there. As the skies lighten up, I’ll be back to tell you what I see.

~~~ It’s now light outside at 720am, with totally clear skies…other than a few high clouds over the ocean to the north. The air temperature was 54.3 degrees, with calm winds. As was the case yesterday, we have a beautiful start to our day! I’ll be home most of the day, until I head down to Kahului to see a film this evening, so I’ll be able to bring you ongoing updates, on this last work day of the week.

~~~ We’ve pushed into the early afternoon hours, now at 1235pm, under increasingly cloudy skies, light winds…and an air temperature of 73 degrees. As was the case both Wednesday and Thursday, the day started off in a really nice way, with mostly sunny skies. Now that the daytime heating of the islands has kicked in, we’re seeing ground moisture being evaporated into the air, rising, and being cooled, leading to the growth of lots of cumulus clouds stacking-up around the mountains…spreading out towards the coasts locally.

~~~ Ok, we’re into the early evening hours here in Kula, at 520pm, under cloudy skies, and an air temperature of 67.6 degrees. The clouds look and feel pretty heavy, although I haven’t seen a drop fall yet. I’m about ready to drive down and pick up my neighbor Jeff in Pukalani, before heading down to Kahului to meet his daughter for dinner. The three of us will see the film that I wrote about below.

Friday Evening Film: This time around it’s a film that is just pure action…nothin’ but! The critics around just about split down the middle, with a 49% liking it, while 64% of the audience viewers are thumbs up. It’s called Robocop, starring Joel Kinnaman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman, Abbie Cornish and Marianne Jean-Baptis. The synopsis: In this film, the year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Overseas, their drones have been used by the military for years – and it’s meant billions for OmniCorp’s bottom line. Now OmniCorp wants to bring their controversial technology to the home front, and they see a golden opportunity to do it. When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) – a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit – is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp sees their chance to build a part-man, part-robot police officer. OmniCorp envisions a RoboCop in every city and even more billions for their shareholders, but they never counted on one thing: there is still a man inside the machine pursuing justice. ~~~ I’ll let you know what I thought Saturday morning, and until then, here’s the trailer for this film.

Interesting:Experts develop low-cost solar panels by recycling rare metals – Swedish firm Midsummer, a leading supplier of production lines for cost effective manufacturing of flexible thin film CIGS solar cells, has developed a unique process to recover leftover rare metals such as indium and gallium when manufacturing thin film CIGS solar cells. The unique process will extensively reduce thin film CIGS manufacturing material costs.

In close co-operation with Professor Christian Ekberg and PhD-student Anna Gustafsson at the Swedish Chalmers University of Technology, Midsummer has developed a unique process to recycle the CIGS-material that does not end up on the solar cell. The process recovers the material that is left from the sputtering targets (30 to 40 per cent) and what ends up on the masks in the machine.

“Normally when recycling these kinds of materials you usually melt down the materials unrefined. But this new and unique method is far subtler as the process makes it possible to remove all the selenium before dissolving the material in its components with various acids,” said Sven Lindström, CEO, Midsummer. “Gallium and Indium are expensive rare earth materials and this unique process makes it possible for us to drastically reduce the material costs while at the same time conserve the earth’s limited resources”.

The unique feature of this process is that it removes selenium by oxygen and thus makes it easier to process the remaining oxidized metals. This is very good as selenium may in some reactions create toxic gases.

“The CIGS material is ground to a powder and oxygen is allowed to flow over the material”, said Anna Gustafsson, PhD-student at the Swedish Chalmers University of Technology. “The method allows SeO2 to be formed and all the selenium is separated from the metals. The separated selenium can then be reformed at very high purity (over 5N purity, 99.999%) so it can easily be reused in the solar cell production process without further purification”.

Midsummer has recently developed a high-efficient process for cadmium-free CIGS on stainless steel with sputtering. By using sputtering in all processing steps, the process cycles in the manufacturing of solar cells can be drastically shortened, the solar cells can be made cadmium-free and also made on stainless steel substrates suitable for light weight flexible modules — all contributing to a highly competitive method to manufacture thin film CIGS cells with high efficiencies. The process is a completely dry process and also an all-vacuum process, with less stringent requirements for clean-rooms etc.